MILES TELLER, ADAM DRIVER, ET AL. IN JAMES GRAY'S PAPER TIGER
2026 New York Film Festival Main Slate announced
The festival runs from September 25 through October 12, 2026, across New York City.
The Oscar Expert's current Best Picture predictions:Opening Night: Paper Tiger (James Gray)
Centerpiece: Behemoth! (Tony Gilroy)
Closing Night: 14th (Ava DuVernay)
9 Temples to Heaven (Sompot Chidgasornpongse)
All of a Sudden (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
Bitter Christmas (Pedro Almodóvar)
Clarissa (Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri)
Dao (Alain Gomis)
The Day She Returns (Hong Sangsoo)
I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies (Mani Haghighi)
The Diary of a Chambermaid (Radu Jude)
Double Freedom (Lisandro Alonso)
The Dreamed Adventure (Valeska Grisebach)
Everything Else Is Noise (Nicolás Pereda)
Everytime (Sandra Wollner)
Fatherland (Paweł Pawlikowski)
La Gradiva (Marine Atlan)
I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming (Isabelle Stever)
The Loneliest Man in Town (Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel)
A Long Winter (Andrew Haigh)
The Man I Love (Ira Sachs)
A Man of His Time (Emmanuel Marre)
Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
Misty Green (Chris Rock)
My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile (Julia Loktev)
My Wife Cries (Angela Schanelec)
Nowhere To Lay My Eyes (Hong Sangsoo)
Once Upon a Time in Harlem (William Greaves and David Greaves)
Possible Love (Lee Chang-dong)
Rose (Markus Schleinzer)
Tender Loving Care (Mike Leigh)
The Unknown (Arthur Harari)
It may seem surprising that a Spanish language film is no. 1, but look at what a big splash La Bola Negra has made in Europe. We in the US have already seen The Odyssey. (Everybody will see The Odyssey ~$922 million worldwide. Except everybody will also be seeing, even more than The Odyssey, Toy Story 5: ~$1.06 billion worldwide; Spider-Man: Brand New Day: ~$1.05 billion worldwide; Michael: ~$1.01 billion worldwide; and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ~$1.01 billion worldwide.) We in the US have also had the opportunity (by August 2026) to see (and your reviewer has reviewed here): Project Hail Mary, Obsession, and The Invite.1. La Bola Negra (The Black Ball)
2. The Odyssey
3. Digger
4. Project Hail Mary
5. Wild Horse None
6. Dune Part Three
7. Obsession
8. The Invite
9. Elsinore
10. All of a Sudden
____________
11. Fjord
12 Behemoth!
13. The Debut
14. Ink
We also have to be curious to see these other NYFF Main Slate films: Paper Tiger (loved James Gray since his debut Little Odessa), Behemoth! (a story about art and commerce), All of a Sudden (the big European hit, by the Japanese filmmaker); the dour Fatherland (Paweł Pawlikowski) because of its literary and intellectual overtones, A Long Winter (Andrew Haigh) and The Man I Love (Ira Sachs), because they have a good track record, and because they're gay; Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev), because I love this director. That's it for now. Why not Bitter Christmas (Pedro Almdóvar)? Because he has not been so interesting lately.
A review here of Julia Loktev's first My Undesirable Friends, to prepare for this new one, is long overdue.